wonderingwanderer

Not really, although they want you to believe that. In reality, over a third of registered voters abstained from voting in 2024.

More people didn't vote than voted for either candidate.

You'd have to be extremely ignorant to believe that opposing European defensive capabilities isn't simultaneously helping the russian agenda.

And what of the French in WWI? They didn't get to choose peace, although I'm sure many of them would have preferred it. It wasn't an option for them when their neighbor invaded. How foolish would it be for a French person at that time to say "No, don't fund our military!"

Assuming you're merely ignorant, and not actively spreading propaganda for the kremlin, people like you have the luxury of remaining so ignorant precisely because other folks sign up to maintain the defense forces and the industries that support it. If they went away, suddenly you would be having some serious problems which wouldn't afford you the luxury of pacifism; only by then you wouldn't have a fighting chance in hell to repel the adversary's invasion.

So be grateful someone is out there deterring those conflicts, so that those conflicts don't come home to roost in your back yard.

If you're trying to draw a comparison between modern Europe (or even modern Germany) and Nazi Germany, don't. You're only revealing your ignorance. Or you know it's inaccurate and you're doing it anyway in bad faith.

Unless you would have every European nation surrender to russian imperialism, which you seem to be trying to excuse in your previous comment. If that's the case, then go away.

Putin is a fascist. The Soviet Union died over 30 years ago. Supporting modern russia doesn't make you edgy or a leftist, it makes you either an idiot or a troll.

What are you on about?

Is this why people like Elon Musk are crying about how the EU supposedly isn't giving them enough "freedom" online?

The EU should confiscate every US-owned company's data servers and digital infrastructure located on EU soil, just like the US did to tiktok.

And I say this as a USian...

I see. I wasn't sure if you were trying to say it's fascism to band together, which it certainly isn't. Fascists do band together, but the only way to defeat them is to band together as well. Fascists also eat food and drink water, but that doesn't mean eating food and drinking water is inherently fascist.

Also, not all populism is fascistic. Fascism is right-wing, authoritarian, militaristic, nationalistic populism. If it's missing any of those characteristics, it's something else, although maybe still something bad. And most of those characteristics usually come together anyway, in a bundle. Typically also with reactionary sensationalism.

One can theoretically have a left-wing populism that's pacifistic, cosmopolitan, and democratic (or perhaps anarcho-syndicalist). That would be an example of non-fascistic populism.

And yes, fascism does co-opt language and symbols, which is one of its biggest disgraces (though not its biggest atrocity). But that doesn't make those language and symbols inherently fascistic. A Zen temple displaying the manji or a Hindu home with a swastika doesn't make them nazis. That symbol belongs to those cultures, it was stolen (appropriated) by the fascists and corrupted into a symbol of hatred and violence, but that doesn't erase the thousands of years of history and culture that that symbol has in the East.

Likewise, fascists were obsessed with ancient mythologies (Greek, Norse, etc.), even Hebrew mysticism, and appropriated a lot of symbols and concepts from those. But that doesn't make those mythologies inherently fascist, and it's entirely possible to have an interest in and study them while also abhoring everything fascism stands for.

People like to accept simplistic definitions of fascism, because it is difficult to define, but that does a disservice because they might overlook the essential components while fixating on auxiliary ones. That's how people end up shunning someone for having an interest in ancient mythology, while simultaneously falling for the personality cult of a right-wing jingo-nationalist. It misses the point entirely.

A unified front is always stronger than piecemeal.

It's also the root of the term myofascia, a type of muscle tissue. But that doesn't make all motile organisms fascist.

Playing with semantics to prove a point is merely sophistry

How much is your socialism gonna help anybody when a fascist state overthrows you because you don't have a military?

Funding a defense force isn't inherently right-wing militarism; it's a practical necessity in the world we live in. Its primary function is as a deterrent to potential invaders, it only goes into kinetic operations when its function as a deterrent fails. All the more reason to maintain a strong military.

Peace is more likely when your adversaries know they won't stand a chance against you.

That's true, and I was hoping everyone would conveniently ignore that fact. But most of the Muslims hated by western bigots are from Arab-majority nations, and Benjamin Netanyahu certainly hates enough Arab people to be called anti-semitic nonetheless.

A lot of americans don't even realize there are Arab Christians...

That was a lot longer than five years ago, before I was even alive. I'm talking about the major protest movement that swept Iran in 2021 if I remember correctly...

You're right though, US meddling started the whole catastrophe that destabilized Iran. It's really sad to think about...

I'm new to lemmy, but at least on reddit it happened pretty much any time people tried talking about men's issues